Hasn’t Germany Learned Anything From Its History?

Families are fleeing to the UK from Germany to escape a law introduced by Hitler that could lead to their children being taken into care if educated at home. One father, who arrived in Britain with his wife and five children last month, has told The Observer that his family had no choice after being warned that their children would be taken into foster care unless they enrolled them at local schools. Another, who fled in October, said he believed the 70-year-old law was creating hundreds of refugees and forcing families into hiding to protect their children.

Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since it was outlawed in 1938. Hitler wanted the Nazi state to have complete control of young minds. […] Klaus Landahl, 41, who moved in January from the Black Forest in Germany to the Isle of Wight with his wife, Kathrin, 39, said they had no option but to leave their home, friends and belongings in order to educate their five children, aged between three and 12, legally and without fear. 'It feels like persecution,' he said. 'We had to get to safety to protect our family. We can never go back. If we do, our children will be removed, as the German government says they are the property of the state now.' […]

Jonathan Skeet, who is British-born, said that he, his wife and five children, aged between two and 11, were driven from Lüdenscheid after the authorities froze their bank account, removed money from it and confiscated their car. […] 'It was crippling,' he said. 'When we lived in Germany we wanted to live a very inconspicuous and quiet life. But instead we ended up in direct confrontation with a very powerful state.'

About 800 families are believed to educate their children at home illegally [in Germany]. Stephanie Edel, who runs the Schulbildung in Familieninitiative, a German organisation that aims to support those who educate at home, said that last year some 78 home-schooled children fled Germany with their parents. 'It is very dangerous to home-educate here,' she said. 'Home-educators have to learn to expect anything and have to be ready to leave overnight.' […]

Last year, in an extreme example, 15-year-old Melissa Busekros was removed from her family. […] Both domestic and EU courts have ruled in the German state's favour on numerous occasions in recent years.

Referring to Hitler's 1938 prohibition is mere hyperbole and of little use to any proper debate on homeschooling in Germany or elsewhere. What is of consequence is research conducted by Moore and Moore, and Taylor, which indicate that homeschooling is in fact far superior to public education. Indeed, homeschooling appears to substantially improve academic performance and foster more healthier socialization and self-actualization for its recipients.

Certainly, there is the spectre that "extreme" or "radical" elements and individuals will indoctrinate their children with "anti-social" nonsense. However, for this reason homeschooling is subject to government regulation to ensure that such curricula are in keeping with those of public schools, especially where mathematics, languages and the sciences are concerned. The spectre has political philosophical roots and cannot seem to be exorcised by appeals to testing, and thus must be ignored by policymakers. If these technocrats are elites that know better than the citizens they supposedly serve, then they of all people should not be moved by hysterical and baseless considerations.

As a product of private, public and homeschooled education, I can safely say that in all areas outside of mathematics, science and to a small degree languages, I owe a great deal to homeschooling and my own private endeavors. As far as my peers who relied solely on one another's idiocy and public education are concerned, I feel as if surrounded by a lost generation.

i'd like to be able to say that I have never had anything against the Bretons butI once dated a Breton girl (Rennes) for a number of months so I can honestly say that I have had something against at least one of them. I wonder if she was a relative of Armor's.

" I wish to make it clear that I do not consider all Bretons who immigrate to the UK to be undesirables. If I did,that would be racist wouldn't it? "

The word racist has no precise meaning. I agree it is wrong to harm someone on account of his race (or on account of anything !), but I don't agree it is wrong to use race as a criteria when you choose your friends or define an immigration policy.

If you define an anti-Breton immigration policy, it does not have to be for racial reasons. It can be something political, or cultural, I don't know. But no country has a duty to accept the population of its neighbors.

" I wish to make it clear that I do not consider all Bretons who immigrate to the UK to be undesirables. If I did,that would be racist wouldn't it? "

Thank you. I don't consider you as undesirable either. However, I think you need to be reminded that you are the immigrant living in my country. My ancestors had to leave Britain due to a pesky invasion of Anglo-Saxons.
Now, be nice to me, or I'll have to lodge a complaint at the UN and regain possession of Britain, old country of my forefathers, birthplace of the Breton nation.

Where did I accuse the undemocratic monstrosity that is the EU for Britain's failure to leave the undemocratic monstrosity that is the EU? I simply stated the fact that the UK would be better off out of the undemocratic monstrosity that is the EU than to remain inside the undemocratic monstrosity that is the EU...

If the British government were to repatriate every undesirable African,Pakistani and Breton tomorrow morning (and somehow managed to lick itself into shape to the degree that even Armor considered it to be a 'true democracy'),the EU would remain the undemocratic monstrosity it has always been,and the UK would still be better off out of it than in.

I think the problem is leftism and immigration, not the EU. What is destroying England is immigration from Africa and Pakistan, not from other European countries. If you think immigration from France and Poland is a problem, it is up to the government in London to put a stop to it. After all, the EU is not supposed to be an organization dedicated to increasing immigration between member states. You probably think that the EEC/EU was a bad thing from the start. I think it was a good idea. In many fields, it makes sense to have a common policy and take decisions at the European level. However, something went wrong in the EU recently. It has become a leftist anti-European instrument. It now supports mass immigration, gay rights, the entry of Turkey, a list of "fundamental rights" drawn up by a committee of unknown leftists... Most of those things should be decided at the local or national level, not in Brussels.

I agree that there is something wrong with the EU. However, the British government has been affected by the leftist disease for longer than the EU. The immigration disaster and the stupid welfare policy are entirely of the British government's making. Your administration doesn't need France, Germany and the EU in order to destroy Britain.

I think the main reason you criticize the EU is because you are afraid to criticize London's crazy immigration policy. But the real problem is not the EU, it is your government, which is NOT A DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT, and has way way way more power than the EU over Britain.

We , of the Allies , thought that we had won WW.2 , how wrong we are .

The E.U. , controlled by Germany and "Vichy" France , now control the whole of Europe , fulfilling Hitler's dream of a Europe of " one people " , "one state". Not bad eh! , not a shot fired and with the willing surrender of the leaders of the others states .

The same could be said of Communism, it still lingers on, entrenched in Europe long after the Cold War ended. By every metric of how rotten the old USSR was you would think the morons in Europe would be very afraid of the EU with it's centralized non-elected gov't, its nanny state mentality and its desire to punish those that don't conform.

Lessons never seem to get learned in Russia as Putin re-Stalinizes the country nor in western Europe where a new fascism stares them in the face and they appease or ignore it.

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